Amazing what the right marketing can do.

Rating: Null/10 (6 November 2002)

It's truly amazing what the right marketing can do for a movie. That together with the involvement of trendy Danny Boyle as Director and Alex Garland (Script) then it's no surprise that this movie topped the UK box office charts. The trouble is it's not very good! The direction has been praised for its realistic and unsettling qualities when all it really seemed to me was an arty-farty way of covering for poor special effects. There were also far too many flaws in the story which made it totally unbelieveable. For me it failed in every way. As a horror it failed because it substituted gore for shocks (i jumped once and that was right at the beginning. As Sci-fi it failed because of the poor effects and by the way it isn't that hard to film a desserted London (See the Boulting Bros movie 7 Days to Noon -they did it far more effectively). Finally it failed because it failed to draw parralells between the rage of the infected and the uninfected. The acting wasn't bad especially Christopher Eccleston as the army commander. The difference between this and another low budget UK movie "Dog Soldiers" is that the latter does its job within it's limits. Its's much scarier, the direction is tighter, humour inserted at the right moments and the script is better. Ultimately it doesn't pretend to be something it isn't.